Jon Vermilyea’s art show is at Secret Headquarters in LA. The show is on Sept 4th at 8pm. It mostly consists of a limited edition 5 color silk screen book based on the Mars Attacks cards from the 1960’s. The original artwork for the book will be on display and for sale too. Come and check it out!

Asuka Ohsawa masterfully uses gouache on paper to create a world rife with dichotomous flair. Long Japanese scroll paintings depict cute anthropomorphic animals frolicking the town in seeming innocence and naivete but upon closer inspection there is a child ready to detonate a bomb and a crowd ready to capture and devour. There is underlying tension in all her works, reflecting on ideals and grievences of family and home, social and cultural norms, sexual moires, and moral righteousness. Each character and its surrounding environment is tightly rendered and outlined in sharp and precise lines, executed in flattened perspectives and limited color palates.

Ottawa-based artist Howie Tsui uses a mix of traditional Asian themes with Western aesthetics. His paintings depict scenes of terror that are very nightmare-like. “Tsui’s work is informed by a variety of dark subjects, including Asian ghost stories, Buddhist hell scrolls, Hong Kong vampire films, neo-conservative propaganda, and twentieth-century genocides such as the Nanking massacre.” We dig it.

Eddie Martinez, impasto painter extraordinaire, creates a strange a wonderful world detailing potted plants, cosby sweaters, googly-eyed owls and beyond. He recently sent me some sneak-peek shots from his studio (inside a barn in Massachusets) of finished works for upcoming exhibitions NYC and Copenhagen! Great works, and a chance to see them “in situ” before getting hung on the clean, white walls of gallery spaces. I had the pleasure of interviewing Eddie back in April….which you can read here.

We’re gearing up B/D Apparel for another season of collaborations with artists from around the world. It might seem like we just send our the art for the shirts to the printers and wait for them to ship us finished shirts but that’s far from the truth! We spend weeks camped out at our printers fine tuning every single shirt. The process can be grueling with some shirts taking an entire day just to get right. Here are some shots from a recent day at the printer….

The idea behind “Smile On Your Brother” is to inspire people to think about their first skateboard and what it meant to them. For many skaters, this still represents a pivotal moment in their lives, with every last little detail, fresh in their minds. Bringing together contemporary artists both in, and affected by the skateboard industry to help raise funds to go towards the first goal of Contributor which is to donate 100 skateboards to disadvantaged youth across Canada in 2009/2010. The show will travel throughout Canada, starting in Vancouver and ending in Quebec City.

There’s some really awesome artists participating in the show, you can check them out here on the artists page, including myself (though excluded from that “awesome artists” list- its the one on the 6th column and 5 rows down). In accordance with the physical tour itself, “Smile On Your Brother” is also holding an online auction ending October 25th 2009. You can get a nice picture of how many skateboards there were contributed- take a look and get some personally customized boards that also benefit charity- win win! I put some of my personal favorites after the jump.

Readers of this blog may already be familiar with Chris Gray whether they’re aware of it or not. This is because he’s designed a couple shirts for Beautiful/Decay Apparel: Sex and Casual Apple. Based in the UK, Mr. Gray has been going off with some seriously good design and illustration work since graduating in 2007. His work is simple and crisp, evoking a certain playfulness through bold fills.